01558--amoebean verses

Amoebean verses is a poetic form in which two characters chant alternate lines, couplets, or stanzas, in competition or debate with one another. This form is found in the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Virgil, and was imitated by Spenser in his Shepheardes Calender (1579); it is similar to the debat, and sometimes resembles stichomythia.

00499--The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia/ summary/ criticism/ Sir Philip Sidney/ ARCADIA

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia

 INTRODUCTION and CRITICISM

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, also known simply as the Arcadia, is a  pastoral romance written by Sir Philip Sidney towards the end of the 16th century. It has an  important place in the history of English literature as  it is the first pastoral romance in English just as Spenser's The Shepherd's Calendar is the first verse pastoral romance.  Arcadia includes a number of lyrics and eclogues after the classical style though it is written mainly in prose.  

ARCADIA is the name of a mountainous district in the Peloponese, the domain of Pan, the god of shepherds.  The poem was written solely for the amusement of Sydney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke.  There was no intention of making money or literary fame from this creation.  Sydney started writing ARCADIA in 1580.  Not only did he not publish it but he also expressed his wish to destroy it while on his deathbed.  However it was published in 1586 posthumously, and it brought him great  fame.

Everything in ARCADIA is on the ideal plane.  Both the story and setting are far removed from reality.  David Daiches remarks, "Ideal love, ideal friendship, and the ideal ruler are, directly and indirectly, discussed, suggested and embodied."  According to Daiches the style of Arcadia is "highly conceited, full of elaborate analogies, balanced parenthetical asides, pathetic fallacies, symmetrically answering clauses, and other devices of an immature prose entering suddenly into the world of conscious literary device."   One of Sidney's constant devices is to take a word and toss it till its meaning is fully extracted with all its aesthetic beauty.  Sidney's reference to the cool wine which seems "to laugh for joy" as it nears a lady's lips is an example of the pathetic fallacy.  There are other examples like the water drops that slip down the bodies of dainty seem to weep for sorrow.  When the princesses put on their clothes, the clothes are described as 'gold'.  

01746--Francesco Petrarch [1304–1374]

Francesco Petrarch [1304–1374]

Francesco Petrarch composed over 300 poems to a woman with whom he never had a relationship. But his innovation on the Italian sonnet form—usually referred to as the Petrarchan sonnet—immortalized both the poet and this mysterious woman.

Although Italian writers had written sonnets before Petrarch, he improved the 14-line poem’s structure and wrote in the vernacular of the day, more closely reflecting the way people actually spoke. Petrarch’s success established the sonnet as a major poetic form. Petrarch influenced poets throughout Europe, including Elizabethan poets like Spenser and Shakespeare.

 From Law Student to Clergyman

Petrarch was born in Arezzo, Italy, where his father practiced law. Petrarch’s father insisted that his sons study law, so the poet and his younger brother complied until their father died in 1326. By then, Petrarch had developed an interest in classical studies and, as he described it, “an unquenchable thirst for literature.” After his father’s death, Petrarch abandoned the study of law and became a Catholic clergyman. Living in Avignon, France, then the seat of the exiled papal court, Petrarch held a variety of church positions that provided him with a modest income as well as free time to devote to literature, classical studies, and extensive traveling.

The Love of His Life

On Good Friday in 1327, when he was 22 years old, Petrarch saw a woman in the Church of Saint Clare in Avignon and immediately fell in love with her. For the rest of his life, he wrote and revised sonnets about his unrequited love for a woman he identified only as Laura. Like Petrarch’s son and many of his friends, Laura died in the plague that devastated much of Europe in the mid14th century. Petrarch recorded the date of her death—April 6, 1348—in a copy of a work by Virgil, a classical Roman poet whom he revered. After Laura’s death, Petrarch continued to write sonnets reminiscing about her, including “Sonnet 292.” The Canzoniere, his masterpiece, is a collection of 366 poems, most of them sonnets that focus on Laura and the themes of unrequited love, desperate love, eternal love, and tragic love.

Poet Laureate of Rome

By the time Petrarch was in his mid-30s, his poetry was widely admired in Italy and France. He received invitations from both the University of Paris and the Senate in Rome to be poet laureate. In 1341, he became Rome’s first poet laureate since ancient times.

00203--John Milton's ‘Lycidas’ as a Pastoral Elegy [English Literature free notes]

John Milton's ‘Lycidas’ as a Pastoral Elegy

Milton’s ‘Lycidas’ is one of the greatest pastoral elegies in English literature.   Pastoralism in literature is an attitude in which the writer looks at life from the view point of a shepherd.  In classical literature this has been successfully handled by Theocritus of Sicily, and after him by Virgil and Bion.  In English literature it was popularised by Sir Philip Sydney and Edmund Spenser, but the scintillating star in the firmament of pastoralism is certainly John Milton.

Pastoral elegy has its own conventions handed down from generation to generation.  Let us see how far Milton has observed them in ‘Lycidas’.  The pastoral poet begins by invoking the Muses and goes on referring to other figures from classical mythology.  In ‘Lycidas’ we find an invocation to the Muses from line 15 to 22.  Milton concludes by expecting a similar service from some other poet when he is dead.

Secondly, the mourning in pastoral poetry is almost universal.  Nature joins in mourning the shepherd’s death in ‘Lycidas’, private sorrow giving place to public sorrow.  Lines 37-49 in Lycidas describes the mourning.  Woods and caves once haunted by Lycidas now mourn for him.

The inquest over the death is another tradition found in Pastoral poems.  In lines 50-63, Milton charges the nymphs with negligence.  But the next moment it dawns on him that they would have been helpless.  Triton, the herald of the sea questions every wind and is assured that the air was calm when Lycidas set sail.  The conclusion drawn is that the fatal ship that sank Lycidas was built during the eclipse and fitted out in the midst of curses.

Then comes a description of the procession of mourners as found in all pastoral elegies.  Camus, representing Cambridge university and leadership, leads the procession.  The last among the mourners is St.Peter mourning the loss to the church incurred by the death of Lycidas.  With a denunciation of the corrupt clergyman, St.Peter disappears.  Lines 88-111 are occupied with this description.

Post-Renaissance elegies often included an elaborate passage in which the poet mentions appropriate flowers of various hues and significance brought to deck the hearse.  Lines 133 to 151 carry such a description.  Among the primrose, the crowetoe, the pink and the woodbine, the amaranth alone signifies immortality with its unfading nature.

In orthodox pastoral elegies there is a closing consolation.  The poet accordingly asks the shepherds to weep no more, for Lycidas is not dead, but has merely passed from one earth to heaven.  Lines 165 to 185 offer consolation.  In Christian elegies, the reversal from grief to joy occurs when the writer realizes that death on earth is entry into a higher life.  But Milton adds that Lycidas has become a genius of the shore to play the guardian angel to those who wander in the dangerous flood.

Milton has followed the conventions in pastoral poetry, but he has mingled in it Greek mythology and Christian theology.  In addition there are two digressions from pastoral strain: a) a discussion on the true values of life, and, b) a bitter criticism of the clergyman of the day. He introduces St.Peter into the list of mourners which shows the deepening puritanical fervour of the poet.  In the other parts of the poem he has merely used the images handed down from classical ages.  But when questions about the religious state of England rose in his mind, he could not restrain himself.  He puts into the mouth of St.Peter a trade against the corrupt clergymen of his day.  He prophesies that the domination of the corrupting leaders is doomed.   The note of keen personal regret is conspicuous by its absence.  Milton here laments the loss of the church, for Edward king was intended for the church.  He would have certainly set an example of purity and devotion to the other priests.  In addition, the poet is bewailing the loss of another poet, who also knew “to build the lofty rhyme”.

‘Lycidas’ is unquestionably a pagan poem.  But Milton, the austere puritan could not help introducing Christian elements into it.  Thus with its curious mixture of pagan loveliness and Christian austerity, it becomes the offspring of Milton’s unparalleled genius.  The poem starts with an apology for breaking the poet’s resolve not to write any poetry until his poetic talent has matured fully.  The concluding eight lines from a sort of epilogue in which Milton speaks directly, having stepped out of the character of the shephered.  Having passed through many moods and sung in different strains, the shepherd draws his clock around him and leaves the spot.

00706--What is Spenserian Stanza?

What is Spenserian Stanza?

The Spenserian stanza (named for Edmund Spenser, who invented it for his romance The FaerieQueene) consists of nine iambic lines rhyming in the pattern ababbcbcc. Each of the first eight lines contains five feet, and the ninth contains six. The rhyming pattern helps to create unity, and the six-foot line, called an alexandrine,

slows down the stanza and so gives dignity and allows for reflection on the ideas in the stanza. Byron used the Spenserian stanza in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

00081--Discuss Matthew Arnold's Touchstone Method of Criticism.

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Matthew Arnold's Touchstone Method of Criticism was really a comparative system of criticism.  Arnold was basically a classicist.  He admired the ancient Greek, Roman and French authors as the models to be followed by the modern English authors.  The old English like Shakespeare, Spenser or Milton were also to be taken as models.  Arnold took selected passages from the modern authors and compared them with selected passages from the ancient authors and thus decided their merits.  This method was called Arnold's Touchstone Method.

            However, this system of judgement has its own limitations.  The method of comparing passage with a passage is not a sufficient test for determining the value of a work as a whole.  Arnold himself insisted that we must judge a poem by the 'total impression' and not by its fragments.  But we can further extend this method of comparison from passages to the poems as whole units.  The comparative method is an invaluable aid to appreciation of any kind of art.  It is helpful not merely thus to compare the masterpiece and the lesser work, but the good with the not so good, the sincere with the not quite sincere, and so on.
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            Those who do not agree with this theory of comparative criticism say that Arnold is too austere, too exacting in comparing a simple modern poet with the ancient master poet.  It is not fair to expect that all hills may be Alps.  The mass of current literature is much better disregarded.  By this method we can set apart the alive, the vital, the sincere from the shoddy, the showy and the insincere.
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00083--[Matthew Arnold]-On what type of subjects can great poetry be written?

            
All art is dedicated to joy, and there is no higher and no more serious problem than how to make men happy.  Only the right art creates the highest enjoyment.  In order to achieve this end, the first problem that comes before a poet is to choose a subject fit for high poetry.  What can be those subjects?  Arnold himself replies:  "Those certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections; to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time."

            The modernness or antiquity of a subject has nothing to do with its fitness for poetical representation.  Its fitness depends upon its inherent qualities.  The date or the age of an action signifies  nothing.  The action or situation itself, its appeal to permanent human feelings, its power to please, to move, and to elevate - these are the basic requisitions of the subject fit for high class poetry.  Whether past or present the subject should be excellent because without an excellent subject excellent poetry cannot be written.  Quoting Aristotle, Arnold says, "All depends upon the subject:  Choose a fitting subject, penetrate yourself with the feeling of its situation; this done, everything else will follow."

            A trivial subject cannot be raised to poetic excellence only by the art and craft of the poet.  Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats and all other great poets were able to write excellent poetry because they were able to choose excellent subjects to write upon.  The proper choice of subject is, therefore, a matter of prime importance for a great poet.

01632--archaism

archaism is the use of words or constructions that have passed out of the language before the time of writing; or a particular example of such an obsolete word or expression. A common feature of much English poetry from Spenser to Hardy, it rarely appears in prose or in modern verse.